17 August 2007

How Do Churches and Religious Groups Provide HIV/AIDS Support?

University of Cincinnati researchers are conducting a two-year study funded by the National Institutes of Health to determine how to optimize HIV/AIDS support and education among churches and religious groups—which can often contradict religious doctrine. The Cincinnati Enquirer illustrates the problem:

The Rev. Damon Lynch Jr., senior pastor of New Jerusalem Baptist Church, remembers when, in the late 1980s, churchgoers asked if the pews could be cleaned after he conducted one of the first local funerals for someone who died of AIDS-related causes.

"Now, the accepted norm is to try to deal with this, and education is always the key to any type of stigma or stereotype," Lynch says.

Previous studies have found most HIV patients "didn't feel welcome [or] left their church because of their diagnosis."

Dr. Joel Tsevat, a principal researcher in the new study, says the goal is to determine what places of worship are doing to support—or alienate—those with HIV. "With a disease like HIV, there are situations in which religion can make things worse," he says. "With the stigma of HIV, and patients believing HIV is a punishment from God or that they don't have to take their medications and God will heal them."

Under the Bush Administration's Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, more churches have received federal funding for HIV/AIDS prevention and support. Some gays rights and HIV/AIDS advocates have criticized the White House for granting funding to ministers—such as the Rev. Willie Wilson, Washington DC's notoriously homophobic pastor, who suggested ""faggots or sissies" were not real men.

Only this year did the National Baptist Convention USA, the nation's largest black religious organization, finally mention HIV/AIDS.

Comments

Later, rather then sooner, black gays will realize that all most churches care about is how much money they can collect from you for all sorts of things, including the fund for the building that never gets built. Wake up black people! This church like the christian faith was something forced on our ancestors then passed on to us. It's time we find something better. We are dying and the church doesn't care.